I really try not to read the comments in other blogs about me. In the early days I did care, but I learned that it’s generally not healthy.

But when I saw that Volokh Conspiracy had a short post by Jonathan Adler about Elizabeth Warren — VC’s first foray into the issue, I believe — I did read.

It’s still not healthy. But one comment (by a commenter, not Adler) caught my eye, referring to a sentence in my original post about Warren’s law license problem:

I recommend that people view Jacobson’s posts with skepticism…. For example, Jacobson’s very first post says “Warren’s Texas Bar information indicates she is not eligible to be licensed in Texas.” In fact, she holds Texas bar membership and has been paying dues, as an inactive member. If she were not eligible to practice, upon payment of the higher dues required of active members, those very words — “Not Eligible To Practice in Texas” — would appear on her profile page as it now does for others.

Hmmm. I have been meticulous in the facts I have reported about Warren. It is true that Warren now is shown as “inactive” and has been inactive since 1992, a fact reported by Rob Eno the other day.

So where did I get the idea that Warren was “not eligible”? In my original post, I didn’t include a screen shot of Warren’s entry, just a link to the Texas Bar page which now says “inactive”.

But I did take a screen shot prior to my first post, I just didn’t include it in the post. Here is the screen shot taken on September 21 showing that Warren was listed as “Not Eligible To Practice In Texas”:

I did not take a screen shot of the “click for detail” link on this page, unfortunately.

But here’s what the same page looks like now using the same link:

In the time period since my first post appeared, Warren’s status on the Texas Bar page changed. And address information has been removed.

Numerous commenters and e-mailers have been writing that in Texas a law faculty member is not able to go on “inactive” status. Thus, if Warren were not actively paying full dues to Texas as a law faculty member, it would make sense that she would be “not eligible” rather than “inactive.”

Why Warren’s status changed after this controversy broke from “not eligible to practice law in Texas” to “inactive” is a mystery. Just one of many.

Update: I should add, as mentioned in my first post, that on Thursday night, September 20, after the Brown-Warren debate, I e-mailed Warren’s press secretary, as follows:

Does Professor Warren have an active law license in any jurisdiction? If so, where?

Please respond by 7:30 a.m. so I can include your response in an article.

It is entirely possible that the Warren campaign then reached out to Texas to get the status changed. Because by 11:39:56 GMT on September 24, the status had been changed and the contact information removed, per the Google Cache page of Warren’s entry. Either that, or it’s a massive coincidence.

Update No. 2 — going back over the research from September 21, I found this link to the “click for detail” which accompanied the “not eligible” designation. It reflects an attorney who is suspended or claiming a CLE exemption. Here is the Google Cache image as of September 8:

Here’s the wording:

Administrative Suspension

This attorney has been suspended by the State Bar of Texas for an Administrative reason. The suspension may be the result of one or more of the following:

Failure to pay Inactive or Active Membership Dues

Failure to pay Attorney Occupational Tax

MCLE requirements non-compliance

Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Default

Failure to pay Child Support

Failure to take A Guide To The Basics Of Law Practice course

For more information, please contact the State Bar of Texas Membership department at (800)204-2222 ext. 1383

MCLE Non-Practicing

A Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Non-practicing Exemption has been claimed. Active members who have not engaged in the practice of law in Texas during the entirety of an MCLE compliance year are eligible to claim an exemption from the MCLE requirements. While claiming this exemption, an attorney is not eligible to practice law in Texas. Active attorneys who remove the non-practicing exemption are immediately eligible to practice in Texas.
For more information, please contact the State Bar of Texas Membership department at (800)204-2222 ext. 1383

Thus, it appears that at the time I notified the Warren campaign on Thursday night, September 20, that I was questioning where she was admitted to practice law, Warren was administratively suspended or otherwise ineligible.

It is possible Warren was claiming an MCLE non-practicing exemption. Warren could have removed the exemption, thus restoring her eligibility but subjecting her to CLE requirements. Remember, Warren said she surrendered her New Jersey license on September 11, 2012, because she could not meet the CLE requirements.

Sometime by or on Monday, September 24, Warren’s status was changed to “inactive” and other information was removed from Warren’s Texas Bar page. On Monday I’ll try to find out how and why.

(The wording of this second update has been clarified soon after original posting.)

In this case, probably the news of Warren’s status went through various hands till it reached eyes who decided “Oh! That’s not right, let me fix that.”
And Volokh’s Adler decided conservatives are a bunch of cheaters so he mistakenly used the status update as a chance to bash.
Innocent enough.
In the future, though, look for the MSM and the Dems to industriously fabricate situations like this with the express purpose of “exposing” the right.

I can imagine it wouldn’t be healthy to read those sorts of comments but credit to you for taking the opportunity to clarify those points. Those who rush to defend her or cast doubt on your findings seem to be reacting in a knee-jerk fashion.

I am not a lawyer but having read a few posts and comments related to your findings, it seems many lawyers found the discussion interesting and relevant for their own work. That’s all well and good but the real issue for a lay person reading this was summarized in your last two sentences. Why all the mystery and sudden urge to clean up her standing in New Jersey and Texas? Why one earth wouldn’t she just go ahead and gain admission in MA? She’s teaching at HARVARD for heaven’s sake. Would anyone in the real world think she wouldn’t have an active law license somewhere? Totally shocks me.

It’s as if the plan is to stonewall this through election day. If she wins, why who’s really going to pursue this, expecially when so many others have gotten away with so much. And, if she loses, who cares? She’ll just fade into the woodwork, so to speak.

I would say she isn’t barking loudly at all. I would say her campaign, as quietly as a weasel sneaking a hen’s egg, called the Texas Bar to claim the exemption. As described in the body of the post there is an exemption for attorneys who have not practiced law in Texas for complying with the continuing education requirement. There’s your Liberal “Transparency” in action.

GrumpyOne is, as they say in the law, “On Point”. The Prof has consistently improved the level of scholarship and veracity of the Blogoverse. He’s been thorough in providing reliable back up data, including screen shots and so much more, for all of his inquiries. He has allowed, even invited, corrective information from others. I have yet to see any “witch hunt” motivation; any jealousy; any animus of a petty or personal nature.

THE QUESTIONS ASKED AND ISSUES PRESENTED ARE VITAL TO THE POLITICAL HEALTH OF OUR REPUBLIC. Warren aspires to awesome power–yet HAS DEMONSTRATED AN INABILITY TO CONDUCT HERSELF IN AN ETHICAL MANNER–EVEN FOR A “MERE” ATTORNEY.

We have not merely “reached” but EXCEEDED that threshold level of concern which not merely justifies BUT COMPELS REJCTION OF WARREN AS A CANDIDATE.

These questions dare not “fade away” after the election. Many of us will join with Prof. Jacobsen to pursue this line of inquiry indefinitely. AND NOT JUST FOR WARREN–FOR ALL CANDIDATES/ELECTED OFFICIALS OF A*N*Y AND A*L*L PARTIES

The operatives of democrat party are very, very busy scrubbing the Internet of incriminating evidence on Warren. Professor Jacobson is an outstanding investigative reporter, but he is only one man, with many other responsibilities. I suspect he has found only 5% of the true facts on Warren.

So the question is: What about the other 95% of Internet scrubbing and evidence concealment that we will never find?

Perhaps it is time to “crowdsource” like our stinky little friends on the left like to do…….someone went to school with her, someone knows her outside the confines of the workplace…..or, like the Clintons, have all “deep throats” been cut? I don’t trust this new crowd of Democrats further than I can throw them. They strike me as just the kind of people that make other people disappear into the night!

To any Democrats reading these comments, and especially those who are involved in the internet scrubbing that is currently going on, I invite you to think about the following:

“Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.

A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste — this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth — Minitrue, in Newspeak — was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”

This is the world that is being made. Your actions are creating this reality.

Is it really one that you want to live in, however?

Why is the truth so damaging? Let the chips fall where they may, and let us all see Elizabeth Warren for who she is.

Professor Jacobson has become one of my two go-to sites – this is excellent investigative work. Now let’s see if she carried malpractice insurance, and what she said inHer application for insurance about her law practice.

That is an excellent question. It is probably too late to get a FOIA request in on Warren, but the market for Legal Malpractice Insurance is very limited, so someone with better search skills than I could probably uncover whether she had it at all, and what was on her application.

As a Texas attorney, I can assure you that “Inactive status” is something you have to apply for. It means you have left the legal profession temporarily. (As opposed to resigning from the bar). The main benefits are your total dues drop to $50/year, you are exempt from CLE requirements and you still get the wonderful monthly magazine. You can later apply to return to active status.

BUT you are ineligible if you are practicing law anywhere or anything resembling the practice of law. Someone with a faculty position at a law school is specifically NOT ELIGIBLE for “inactive status.”

If I had to make an educated guess, her license was administratively suspended for either failure to pay dues/occupation tax AND/OR not completing her CLE requirements. She then retroactively applied for inactive status, which would have required her to affirmatively state that she had been eligible for inactive status the entire year, which would have necessarily been false statements. (She still is technically on the law school faculty, right?)

If your dues/taxes are in arrears or you are not in CLE compliance, you will show as “NOT ELIGIBLE TO PRACTICE” until you get current. All the while, late penalties are accruing. However, at a certain point if you are still in non-compliance or arrears (six months late, I believe), your license will then be suspended, at which point you have to apply for reinstatement and pay a bunch of fees. (I am informed reinstatement is a real, expensive, pain in the ass)

Here’s an interesting blog post by someone who was at the same high school as Elizabeth Warren in Oklahoma and who was also on the debate team. Says her debate partner was the star. As we all know, Warren’s bio says that she was named “Oklahoma’s top high school debater.” But this former school mate says he can find nothing anywhere that quotes Warren as being the top high school debater in the state.

Anyone care to ask the Warren campaign where her claim comes from? Is this like her claim that she was the first breast feeding mother to take the Bar exam in the history of New Jersey

She’s an extremely delusional person, period. As a lay person on this end I won’t comment on the legal and academic related stuff, other than it’s obvious Harvard Law is chock full of some real pieces of work,

When I investigate folks’ backgrounds, usually I’ll start with county clerks’ offices. Often times they have content going as far back as the 70’s, everything from courts to real estate records, and these days the stuff is online. I’ll do some digging on Fauxcohantas later on today.

She’s one of those “something doesn’t add up” types, although I’ve worked around affirmative action hires in the armed forces and some in the private sector and some are really delusional. A commenter over at Ricochet observed that the debate team claim came from a Vanity Fair article, which indicates the claim is a total fabrication by Warren herself or whomever the magazine was working with on Warren’s behalf.

A certain candidate for sheriff in TX has my attention right now, I happen to know a little about his background and how much of a phony the guy is, so this Warren situation fascinates me. Keep in mind Warren is a personal friend of the Obama, the Dems are going to pull out all the stops to get her elected. I smell an agenda regarding the lack of vetting of Obama and folks like Fauxcahontas, one which may reach high into the government and goes across much of academia and the Old Media.

Born in Oklahoma City, Warren attended grade school in Norman and graduated from Northwest Classen High School, in Oklahoma City, where she was named “Oklahoma’s top high-school debater.”

Karl Johnson, former high school debate partner, now an attorney at Luebben Johnson & Barnhouse in New Mexico said,” During the 1960s, Elizabeth Warren (then known as Liz Herring) and I were debate partners for three years in a very active and successful speech and debate program at Northwest Classen High School.”

“We may as well have been joined at the hip for those three years, spending countless days, evenings and weekends together preparing for and attending debate tournaments throughout Oklahoma and elsewhere. ”
___

Except for Wikipedia -which is unreliable and which magazine editors do not use to verify sources- I can find no news article that states that Warren was singled out as “Oklahoma’s top high school debater.”

Warren was never an individual debater; she was on a team with Karl Johnson. Why would Warren be singled out as the top debater without Johnson? And as a former schoolmate of Warren and Johnson’s, who was a debater himself said, Johnson was known as being the top debater at their high school.

I have written to the paper that published this to ask them for the source for Warren’s claim. I am guessing it was the unreliable Wikipedia. Was this just a claim by Warren that has been repeatedly endlessly by reporters and not fact checked? Why didn’t she mention Karl Johnson, her debate partner? Shouldn’t he be called Oklahoma’s top debater too? Who “named” Warren as Oklahoma’s top high school debater?

Also, this Oklahoma article states that in another interview, Warren claims she got a full debate scholarship to George Washington at age 16. These days, only partial debate scholarships are given out. It may be that she was offered a “full” scholarship but this needs to be verified too. And was she really only 16?

Incumbent Republican Scott Brown and his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren remain tied in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Massachusetts Voters finds Brown and Warren each picking up 48% of the vote. One percent (1%) prefers some other candidate, while three percent (3%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

On January 10, 2010, when a recent Rasmussen poll was showing Brown just single digits behind Martha Coakley and a just completed PPP poll was showing a dead heat, a Boston Globe – UNH poll (same organization as this time) showed Coakley with a 15 point lead. http://legalinsurrection.com/2010/01/globe-poll-an-outlier/

Great job Prof. and keep up the pressure!
Status changes in two states just as you start asking questions? It’s likely just an innocent coincidence and no one should look further into this matter. Lyawatha, the cover-up is always worse than the crime, ask tricky Dick.
Why did she do this? Imagine a reporter asking her this question – “The Brown campaign is attempting to smear you by insinuating that you are not licensed to practice law. How do you respond?” Lyawatha then says, “I am in good standing with the Texas and NJ bars – he is making up lies about me. He’s such a bully picking on a native American woman.” The MSM will be happy with this answer and drop the whole thing.

Keep being Breitbart! Keep the information dribbling out. She has to crack soon.

I am told by those who know that the Mass Bar Exam is unusually easy to pass (no insult to license holders intended). So it would seem that for an attorney of Ms. Warren’s great skill she could easily have avoided all this tumul by simply taking it and, probably, passing with a record-shattering grade.

He sent someone to locate the hard copy of the Federal Court case In Massachusetts that EW participated in. It was archived, but they located it. It’ll take them until Tuesday (night after the debate) to get the hard copy. Interestingly, the clerk told Howies people that they weren’t the first to request the document that day.

You got an email from the Texas State Bar saying that their records showed she’s been on inactive status since 1991, right? Don’t you think the most likely explanation is that the Texas State Bar figured out they screwed up her status on their public web page?

First, as the Professor’s screen grabs show, Warren was listed as “Not Eligible to Practice in Texas” in early September 2012. Here is another Google cached version of Warren’s Texas Bar listing that reflects her as “Not Eligible to Practice in Texas” on September 10, 2012.

Second, this Red Mass Group blog post reported an email from the Public Information Director of the State Bar of Texas stating that Warren had been on Inactive Status since 6/1/92. This is not necessarily inconsistent with being Ineligible to Practice in September 2012. I think a lawyer can be licensed in Texas, then go inactive, and subsequently become ineligible to practice (while inactive) for failure to pay the annual bar dues of $50. If so, then Warren’s listing could have changed over the years, from Inactive to Not Eligible and then back to Inactive.

However, I haven’t seen any screen grab or cached version indicating Warren’s Texas Bar listing showed her as Inactive prior to September 2012. If so, then you could be correct that “the most likely explanation is that the Texas State Bar figured out they screwed up her status on their public web page.”

I think she could have applied for inactive status in 1992 (not 1991), if she applied for that status after she left Penn and before she joined Harvard.

“She joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987, becoming a tenured professor. She began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1992 as a visiting professor, and began a permanent position as Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law in 1995.”

I don’t think the Texas bar requires $50/year for inactive status. The way I read the rules, you only have to pay $50 in the year you request inactive status. If I’m right, that wouldn’t have been the reason for the Administrative Suspension.

“I think she could have applied for inactive status in 1992 (not 1991), if she applied for that status after she left Penn and before she joined Harvard.”

But that’s only true if she was no longer a law professor in June 1992, right? Warren’s CV shows she was on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1990-1995, and it wasn’t until 1995 that she permanently moved to Harvard Law. She was a visiting professor at Harvard Law in 1992.

DRJ, I don’t know. I would think a Professor would also go on a leave of absence to teach at another school. The Professor would know.

OT: Let me go on a little rant about the Texas State Bar. It’s really unfair to make someone pay $50/yearly for the privilege of not practicing law in Texas. I’m inactive in two other states and they don’t require payments (they do require catch up payments if I wanted to return to active status). This is typical of the way Texas tries to squeeze people for money (in lieu of an income tax). When I was admitted in Texas, after practicing in other states for over 25 years, they made me pay $350 to watch an on-line video from the ’90s on “how to practice law” because their rules require all newly-admitted lawyers (even if admitted first in other states) to take this class or be put on suspended status. Stupid.

“DRJ, I don’t know. I would think a Professor would also go on a leave of absence to teach at another school. The Professor would know.”

I bet Professor Jacobson would know the answer, but I’m having a problem seeing how taking a leave of absence from Penn Law to work as a visiting professor at Harvard Law would not still be considered as working as a “full-time or part-time faculty member of any law school” under the Texas State Bar rules.

you said that, “Neither office in New Jersey could state whether her license was continuously active until her resignation because the computer only shows the current status, so I have made the request in writing as instructed.”

[…] explain the various matters that Jacobson has uncovered, which are still proliferating. In his latest post, for example, he reveals that the Texas Bar, for reasons unknown, changed the entry under […]

Also, if it’s correct that Warren recently notified the Texas State Bar she is on leave of absence from Harvard Law — and thus eligible to be considered Inactive — then Warren’s status could have been shown as subject to “Administrative Suspension” because she had outstanding bar dues. Once those were paid, her status would then be changed to Inactive.

Correction: Also, if it’s correct that Warren recently notified the Texas State Bar she is on leave of absence from Harvard Law — and assuming that means she is eligible to be considered Inactive — then Warren’s status could have been shown as subject to “Administrative Suspension” *if* she had any outstanding bar dues. Once those were paid, her status would then be changed to Inactive.

2. Executive Director of Voting Rights Group, New Democracy Coalition, sees a problem in Warren’s lack of Massachusetts law license

Kevin C. Peterson, the founder and executive director of the New Democracy Coalition, said on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio, “that there is there there” in regards to the controversy over Elizabeth Warren’s law license. The New Democracy Coalition focuses on the areas of civic literacy, civic policy and electoral justice.

Has anyone commented yet on the irony of a tenured law professor’s surrendering of her law license for a supposed inability to comply with CLE requirements? As a member of the NY and NJ bars, I can say that NJ’s requirements are not much more onerous than most states’. The biggest difference between NY and NJ is that NJ allows only half of the 24 credits over 2 years to be self-study. Is she above the rest of us that have to make arrangements with CLE providers to keep up our licenses?

In her 2003 Supreme Court amicus brief, Warren affirmed that she was licensed to practice law in TX & NJ. Yet she’d been not eligible to practice in TX since ’92, and not in NJ “for a very, very long time.”